The first picture is strangely beautiful, in an apocalyptic kinda way.In New Delhi, a mountain of garbage, high as the Taj Mahal.
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The first picture is strangely beautiful, in an apocalyptic kinda way.In New Delhi, a mountain of garbage, high as the Taj Mahal.
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Yes, a mountain range of garbage with valleys could be interesting tourist sites.The first picture is strangely beautiful, in an apocalyptic kinda way.
In New Delhi, a mountain of garbage, high as the Taj Mahal.
Thanks for this very interesting demonstration.One of the things thermodynamics shows us is that whenever we do work, we spend energy and we create entropy. Entropy is a difficult term to comprehend, but one way of seeing it is that entropy is disorder. When you pour milk in your coffee the entropy of the system (the cup, coffee and the milk) is low. The milk and the coffee is still roughly separated. After stirring with a spoon they become mixed, and thereby the entropy increases.
To separate them again you need work and therefore energy. According to thermodynamics, this creates even more entropy. The 2. law of thermodynamics states that the total amount of entropy in a closed system will either stay constant or increase. Every time we manufacture something, it causes more entropy, and since the process of manufacturing the product basically is a matter of lowering entropy locally (in the product), this entropy must be dumped somewhere else. Simplified, that is what you see in the image.
Some entropy is dumped into space through IR, which has higher entropy than the sunlight hitting the planet, but since we can't dump 100% of the disorder we create, it will build up in the system. With a planet where humans generally cause exponential growth in almost any subsystem, that entropy buildup is a serious issue nobody really talks about. For billions of years the system has been able to dump entropy into space, creating an equilibrium, but today we burn fossil fuels creating energy (and entropy) that roughly resembles 1/4 of the total energy flow in the biosphere. This number is quickly increasing, and considering all the energy we need to change the system to a more sustainable one, that in itself shows that we are up the alley with absolutely no paddle.
That means reducing the number of people down to roughly one million, living as hunter gatherers.
It's that bad!
Yes, an equally probable outcome might be that there literally is no one left at 2100. It is difficult to combine all this into a model, because some things depend on our behavior, but as I wrote earlier, we have no realistic plan for replacing fossil fuels. We will also need to spend a lot of work and energy to build a replacement, and we do not have the necessary resources for that, including elements. Solar panels use phosphorus to name one.No, it's probably a lot worse than that. It's not like they'll be living in pristine environments with pre holocene levels of animal numbers and diversity - but a severely polluted and denuded landscape and ocean that's going to take a very, very long time to recover. A world wide population of a million seems somewhat optimistic .
What a world we're creating.
The human race will survive, unless it is something like a big dinosaur rock, situation. Civilisations on the other hand; rise and fall; all of the time. Even if the Earth's atmosphere become toxic; the rich etc, will just live underground, using filtered or manufactured air.Yes, an equally probable outcome might be that there literally is no one left at 2100. It is difficult to combine all this into a model, because some things depend on our behavior, but as I wrote earlier, we have no realistic plan for replacing fossil fuels. We will also need to spend a lot of work and energy to build a replacement, and we do not have the necessary resources for that, including elements. Solar panels use phosphorus to name one.
Wind and hydrogen is probably our best chance, but with the current population growth, according to the article I linked to, and my own models, the system may collapse in anywhere from 15-50 years, but it will collapse. Most likely it won't come as one big catastrophe but a steep downhill. Whether it will be hunger, social unrest, collapse of the growth economy or a giant asteroid that gets us first is difficult to predict accurately, but it probably won't be the asteroid. The collapse of the economy can't be far away. Economists know that it will come sooner or later when the system reaches the ceiling. They just seem to have no idea about when, a very little understanding of biophysics.
Saving the economy does not matter, considering that without humans there won't be any economy left. Also we tend to forget that economy is quite simple. We have an amount of resources, and we are 7.8 billion people. Economy is the rule set we have set up for how we split that pile of resources. Of course some feel that they have right to more than others. Whether one consider that fair doesn't matter. We can't change that. Economy is an emergent property in the system, and almost every set of historical data I look at shows that the way the World evolves, is like a supertanker on rails. We did fix lead and CFC though. Sort of.
It's absurd.
Even if the Earth's atmosphere become toxic; the rich etc, will just live underground, using filtered or manufactured air.
The Dark Ages brought us, the Renaissance.A brighter future ...underground!
Puts me in mind of an old classic:The human race will survive, unless it is something like a big dinosaur rock, situation. Civilisations on the other hand; rise and fall; all of the time. Even if the Earth's atmosphere become toxic; the rich etc, will just live underground, using filtered or manufactured air.
Yes rich and buried.A brighter future ...underground!
No they won't. Earth is a planet like in ED. It is totally isolated. The only thing that it receives is energy from the sun. The only thing leaving the planet is that same energy. Before I started studying this I honestly thought that it was tree hugging hippie nonsense, but the thing we call the biosphere is what out survival depend upon. You need food to survive. That's because the food contains energy. That energy can't be created otherwise, not even with solar power or windmills. It comes from the Sun, is stored in a plant and then a cow, pig, chicken or human eats the plant to get the energy. We humans can't store energy through photosynthesis, and we can't reproduce the proces artificially.The human race will survive, unless it is something like a big dinosaur rock, situation. Civilisations on the other hand; rise and fall; all of the time. Even if the Earth's atmosphere become toxic; the rich etc, will just live underground, using filtered or manufactured air.
No they won't. Earth is a planet like in ED. It is totally isolated. The only thing that it receives is energy from the sun. The only thing leaving the planet is that same energy. Before I started studying this I honestly thought that it was tree hugging hippie nonsense, but the thing we call the biosphere is what out survival depend upon. You need food to survive. That's because the food contains energy. That energy can't be created otherwise, not even with solar power or windmills. It comes from the Sun, is stored in a plant and then a cow, pig, chicken or human eats the plant to get the energy. We humans can't store energy through photosynthesis, and we can't reproduce the proces artificially.
When we change the biosphere the system will try to get back to equilibrium. Not that the system "thinks" it's a good idea, it's just the way the laws of nature makes it work, like the code that makes ED run. When the system gets too far away from equilibrium it collapses.
When you put bacteria in a Petri Dish they will reproduce and eat until there is nothing left to eat. Then they all die. I was naive back when I thought that humans were more advanced and therefore could act more responsively with our frontal lobe and all that. No we can't, or at least, no we don't.
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"Puts me in mind of an old classic: "
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Yes, we'll feed on each other and gallows humorOn a positive note the death phase will be extended quite a lot with the introduction of soylent green
We can continue burning fossil fuels as long as they last, and we probably will, but that will cause massive changes to the climate, further reducing the food production. We can also reduce the population until the planet can sustain it via the biosphere. That means reducing the number of people down to roughly one million, living as hunter gatherers.
It's that bad!
BP’s chief executive has come under fire from campaigners after he urged Cambridge University not to drop its fossil fuel investments.
Bob Dudley was greeted with laughter when he told an industry conference on Tuesday: “We donate and do lots of research at Cambridge so I hope they come to their senses on this.”
His comments came a week after he launched BP’s climate change strategy, which involves expanding into clean energy and capping carbon emissions.
“These [divestment] efforts are coming out of the US, the east coast and west coast, and New York, and it is generally the simplified idea that we turn everything into renewables – that climate change will be solved by renewables,” he said.
“When you dig into it and look into the numbers, of course, it can’t work. You’ve got to get more sophisticated about it.”
Divestment campaigners reacted angrily and said Cambridge’s academic freedom was at risk.
Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, which is lobbying the university to ditch its estimated £377m investment in fossil fuels, said: “BP’s mask slipped to reveal the ugliness lying beneath.
“Mr Dudley’s outrageous threat is just another sign of an industry desperately clinging on to power, knowing its only chance for survival is to subvert democracy at universities like Cambridge and leech off their reputation.”